LegalTech New York 2016 took place in early February. Several Morris James attorneys and members of IT attended the event. As usual, the event attracted some of the best legal technology minds in the country.

The trends that were observed at the 2015 conference have continued.  This year’s discussions not only focused on understanding the disparate areas of law that technology affects, but also emphasized that these various areas are all interrelated and cannot be viewed in vacuum.  Information governance efforts directly impacts scope of discovery and data security.  Standard discovery protocols affect retention strategy and implicate security concerns.  Privacy issues impact both scope of discovery and frame information governance protocols.

Other key topics discussed at the conference included:

eDiscovery

Predictive coding is now recognized as a solution for both large-scale projects as well as something that can be utilized in smaller review.  It was stressed, however, that predictive coding is not a cure-all for all matters.  To that end, additional alternatives to keyword searching beyond predictive coding were discussed.  Smaller projects can now benefit from these other methods of culling beyond keyword searching such as clustering and concept groups.

Predictably, the Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were discussed, particularly their impact on effective and defensible document retention and proportionality as well as their effect on sanctions.  

The first keynote of the conference featured a panel of influential jurists who stressed the increasing importance of vendors and their role in educating both the bench and bar. The importance of vendors was also emphasized in the context of discovery battles and the efforts to implement proportionality principles.  

Information Governance

Perhaps the hottest topic at this year’s conference was information governance.  Importance was again placed on in-house counsel’s role in increasing awareness and effectiveness of information governance in an effort to combat both the cost of discovery as well as secure sensitive data.

Privacy Issues

Another major subject involved the recent European Court of Justice decision striking down the Safe Harbor Decision and the efforts to reach a new deal to allow US-EU data to flow securely.  Furthermore, the tension between privacy rights (both in the US and the EU) and broad scope of discovery in the United States was discussed.